ciiap. viii. SHEEP SHEARING IN SOUTH AFRICA. 
219 
with the Bible, and there was something very pleasing in the 
simple, unobtrusive piety of the family. After we had retired 
to rest I heard one of the young people reading the Bible, 
and all afterwards uniting in their evening hymn; and again 
the next morning, before it was fully light, the sound of their 
morning hymn and Scripture reading was heard. A cup of 
coffee was soon afterwards provided for us, and our host, who, 
we had learned, was a descendant of the French refugees, 
having understood that we were travelling on a religious 
errand, refused any recompense for the accommodation he 
had so cheerfully furnished both for us and our horses. 
At a farm-house, where we stopped during the forenoon to 
procure food for our horses, we were again refreshed with 
coffee, which seemed to be always ready, standing in a brass 
or copper kettle over a dish of burning charcoal. The good 
Dutch farmer here made a number of inquiries, which we 
were unable to satisfy, respecting the price of wool at Port 
Elizabeth. He told us he possessed 8000 fine-woolled sheep, 
and that his people were shearing in a sort of barn opposite, 
on entering which we saw three white men, and as many 
natives, busily at work. The legs of the animals were tied, 
and the sheep, whose wool the white men were removing, 
were laid on a bench, so that the shearers stood upright. 
The natives had their sheep laid on the floor. The farmer 
told us a good workman would shear thirty or forty sheep in 
a day, and that each fleece contained about three pounds of 
wool. The sheep were unwashed. The master said that at 
Colsberg he obtained sixpence per pound for unwashed wool, 
and for that which was clean a shilling; but observed that he 
had too many sheep to be able to wash them. 
The weather was rainy and cold during this part of our 
journey, and provender scarce. On Friday we stopped for 
the night at the house of a hospitable English family of the 
name of Trollope, residing at a place called Saltpansdrift. 
